The subject area is Late Bronze Age ornamentation examining the modes of networking, cultural transmission and local appropriation of figurative imagery in Europe ca. 1300-700 BCE. She has a BA in prehistoric archaeology with a minor in museology from Aarhus University, and will be finishing her MA as part of her PhD. This article is based on her bachelor's dissertation with new perspectives added and is the result of close collaboration with Helle Vandkilde.
We present a hitherto unresearched part of a shared Danish and American cultural heritage: Native American objects in Danish regional museum collections. Thus far, we have identified more than 200 Native American artefacts in 27 local museums, largely a result of Danes abroad privately collecting in the late 1800s and 1950s–70s. The majority of these artefacts, many of which are prehistoric in age, have never been displayed and have lingered in storage since they were accessioned, understudied and often unrecognised for what they are. Recent deaccessioning pressures from the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces potentially place these objects at risk of destruction, making the discussions presented here a timely issue. These Native American objects, like the unknown numbers of other non-Danish artefacts held by regional museums, hold tremendous potential to elucidate overlooked parts of Danish museum history, trans-Atlantic networks and interconnectedness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as rich material cultures originating far from Denmark. We argue that this perspective is highly relevant and should be utilised in Danish museums, as it begets reflections on Danish glocal identity and society in a post-colonial world.
Horned-helmet imagery continues to raise questions about what is local and what is global in Bronze Age Europe. How similar is the imagery found on Sardinia, in southwestern Iberia and southern Scandinavia in material appearance, medium of representation, and sociocultural setting? Does it occur at the same point in time? Does it spring from or transmit a shared idea? Analysis reveals intriguing patterns of similarity and difference between the three zones of horned-helmet imagery 1000–750 BC. The results point to actors and processes at the local level while also pinpointing interconnections. Across all three contexts, horns signify the potency of the helmet wearer, the quintessential warrior. Horns visualise a defined group of bellicose beings whose significance stems from commemorative and mortuary rites, sites, and beliefs – in conjunction with political processes. We suggest that the eye-catching imagery of very particular males wearing horned insignia relates on the one hand to local control of metals and on the other to the transfer of novel beliefs and cults involving embodied gigantisation. It is characteristic that the horned figure is adapted into some settings, but only sparingly or not at all in others. This imagery has a complex history, with Levantine roots in the LBA Mediterranean. The Scandinavian addendum to the network coincides with the metal-led Phoenician expansion and consolidation in the west from c. 1000 BC. A Mediterranean–Atlantic sea route is suggested, independent of the otherwise flourishing transalpine trading route.
In this article, we identify and discuss Nordic Bronze Age interspecies relationships through a relational approach that is open to ontologies that differ from our own. Drawing on bronze objects, faunal remains and rock art recovered from a multitude of Nordic Bronze Age sites (1700–500 BC), we outline the complex evolution and interactions of significant socioeconomic and cosmological elements such as the horse, the sun, the warrior, the sea and fish, and their relationships to life and death. We suggest that these elements may be seen as interconnected parts of an entangled whole, which represents a specific Nordic Bronze Age cosmology, which developed between 1600 and 1400 BC, and combined local, archaic world views and foreign influences.
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